The Gunpowder in “Gunpowder Fantasy”

After you’ve decided on which aspects of traditional Epic Fantasy you intend to include in your world, you can look to the things that you will be able to do differently.

Some “Gunpowder Fantasy” (A.S. Warwicks’ Commonwealth Chronicles, William King’s Terrarch Chronicles) lean more toward the early Gunpowder Era and maintain more of a Muskets and Magic feel.

Prevalence

Who has access to Gunpowder in your world? Is it a common technology that nearly everyone uses, or is it in the hands of the few? Is there widespread production of gunpowder or is it a rare, precious commodity?

Creating a world where everyone has gunpowder leaves your armies on a mostly even playing field. They all have access to similar weapons and have to make their advantages out of intangibles: strategy, tactics, etc.

A setting where gunpowder is used only by the few can setup a massive disadvantage for one side or the other. You can put power into the hands of the producers by making gunpowder a rare commodity; make the recipe a secret known only to a few.

Weapons

The first, and probably the most obvious, element that is opened up when your choose to write Gunpowder Fantasy is the use of gunpowder weapons. From the arbuequs to the rifled musket, from simple smoothbore cannon to rifled barrels and siege mortars, the use of gunpowder weapons can have an effect that varies greatly on the path of your story.

Artillery

The first form of gunpowder weapons to consider is the artillery. Where in the “Gunpowder Era” you decide to set your world will determine your overall tech level, but even within those bounds there are many different types of artillery.

Smoothbore cannons, mortars, howitzers and rifled cannon are all options for your world to employ in artillery. Each of these types will have advantages and disadvantages that will have an effect on your world if you choose to add them to your armies.

Howitzers, for example, are typically shorter barreled, used to lob rounds at a steeper angle while not suffering from the short ranged mortars. In the Griffins & Gunpowder universe, I decided to forego the use of howitzers and my armies have to fight their battles accordingly. Earthworks become more important as it is more difficult to get rounds to fall directly behind them. This makes trench warfare more effective.

Small Arms

Artillery can have an effect on the way wars are fought in your world; small arms will have an effect

Choosing an earlier type of man-portable gunpowder weapon (say, the arbuequs) will leave your world more open to traditional medieval warfare (swords, bows and arrows, etc). This would be a more ideal setting for a warrior-type main character, someone who is going to be in and among the fight. Battles will be long and bloody and involve a great deal of hand-to-hand fighting.

Later weapons, such as rifled muskets, will create a major shift in the strategies of your world and how battles are fought. Gone will be the days of constant close fighting, and in will be the battles of tight formations of soldiers standing shoulder to shoulder and firing volleys, skirmishers with long rifles moving forward ahead of the main body to disrupt the enemy scouts and skirmishers, and the compact carbines, for quick moving cavalry attacks. Commanders will rely on strategy and manuevering, rather than brute force and superior numbers.

Some of the accessories to small arms that you can consider bringing into your world are bayonets and looking glasses (telescopes). Both of these will create a twist in the way that firearms are used in your world. Bayonets make hand-to-hand combat more brutal and makes your infantry more powerful at repelling cavalry charges.

Looking glasses create the possibility of sharpshooters and skirmishers. Attached to a rifled musket, looking glasses make your shooters more accurate at longer ranges. Skirmishers can be used as assassins, ordered to target the officers and commanders of the enemy force before they engage the main body of troops. Or they can be used as scouts and screening elements, the eyes and ears of the army who harass the skirmishers on the other side of the field and prevent them from learning the strength and dispositions of the armies.

Pistols/Revolvers

The last element of small arms to consider are the pistols and/or revolvers that will be used in your world. Like the other types of weapons, pistols and revolvers will be determined by the level of technology that you set for your world, but in the gunpowder era, revolvers and pistols were typically ahead of the curve.

There are two things to take into consideration when you’re planning out this part of your arsenal: do you want to use revolvers? If so, do you have these revolvers muzzle-load or use cartridges? Cartridge revolvers will increase the speed that the revolvers fire and reload at.

Pistols and revolvers were typically more expensive, which means that they were typically used only by officers and nobility. Whether you continue this into your worlds is up to you, but even an entire army armed with revolvers will have little effect on the flow of a battle until they are nearly too close to worry about reloading the weapons.

In the next article, we’ll talk about some of the other aspects of Gunpowder Era technology that can be incorporated into your world, including steam power and telegraphy.

For the second post of “What is Gunpowder Fantasy” I’ll be discussing the use of magic and mythical creatures in the sub-genre. (The bulk of this post taken from my guest post at A Way With Worlds)

Magic

Magic has been in fantasy from the very beginning of modern Fantasy. C.S. Lewis and JRR Tolkein both made extensive use of magic in their worlds.

So it would be natural that Magic would be another element of traditional fantasy that can be used to connect your Gunpowder Fantasy to the bulk of Epic Fantasy.

The exact nature of your magic system is up to you, but there are a few major points that you need to address when you’re building a magic system.

First, and with everything in your world, you have to make sure that you are consistent. If magic works one way at the beginning of the book, it needs to work the same way in the middle and at the end.

The Prevalence of Magic is usually one of the first aspects that I approach when I am building magic into one of my worlds. How common are magic users within your world? Are there mages and witches and wizards in every town and village? Or are they rare? Or is magic thought to be extinct except to a very select few?

One aspect of your world that will be affected by the Prevalence of Magic within your world, and one that not everyone considers when they are building their world, is the Impact on the technology of your world. If magic is extremely common, then technology will develop differently and perhaps more slowly than in a world where magic is rare or nearly extinct. Why develop improved weapons when everyone can cast a fireball with their minds?

Something that will affect and be affected by the Prevalence of Magic, is the Source: how does one go about becoming a magic user. Is it a natural gift? (Here you can increase or decrease the prevalence of magic by deciding on how common the gift is.) Is it a knowledge based system that only requires study and how common are the books that teach magic? Is Magic only gained through some ritual and how difficult are those rituals to perform? Lastly, can magic only be gained through some accident or event? This particular source would be best paired with magic that is very rare as accidents can’t be controlled.

With the Prevalence and Source of Magic decided, another aspect that must be approached is the Energy of Magic. What gives the user the ability to cast their spells? Do your magic users have to carry talismans of power? Do they need to draw their energy from themselves or from the people around them? This can be another factor in the Prevalence of Magic. A system that is learned by anyone is all well and good, but if it relies on certain talismans that are very rare, then very few will be able to learn.

Limits of Magic is an aspect of your system that is very important. Magic systems without limits can become boring quickly if there is nothing to keep magic users in check. Even stories where the magic users seem to have unlimited power should have some weakness, otherwise the story can’t progress.

Limits can come in many different forms, several of which are similar to the Source of Magic and can tie into Prevalence. Your magic system can be limited by Knowledge: mages must learn spells and those scrolls or tomes can be rare. You can limit your magic through the Energy of Magic: if the mage has to draw from their own energy, at some point they should become exhausted and unable to cast new spells. You can use other magic-users as a Limit: anyone who grows too powerful or too reckless can be put down by other magic users.

An aspect of your magic system that is more open to personal interpretation is Divisions of Magic. This aspect isn’t integral to the system, but can add flavor to it. You can have your divisions “hard”: magic users can only draw from a single school or aspect of magic. Soft divisions allow magic users to draw on any aspect that they have access to (this ties into your Source and Energy categories).

The magic system that I use in my Griffins & Gunpowder universe is rather limited. I would rate it as “Rare” Prevalence: only a certain, random portion of Elves are born with The Gift. This covers both the Prevalence, Source and Impact: technology in this universe has advanced to rifles and early steam power. Magic users can draw from energy within themselves, and can “store” this energy beforehand to have ample supply, and some can draw on the energies and emotions of those around them.

Magic users in the Griffins & Gunpowder universe are limited by both energy and knowledge. They will quickly burn through even the largest “stockpile” of energy and must study spells to perfect them. This is further complicated by the fact that magic users have a Major and Minor aspect that are randomly drawn from one of the four divisions: Shadow, Light, Life and Death. Books teaching each of these aspects are rare and the magic users have to learn prerequisite spells before they can learn more advanced selections.

So, when planning a Magic system remember to maintain consistency and consider each aspect of your system and how it impacts the other aspects and your story in general.

Mythical Creatures

I was considering folding this discussion into the “Settings” part of my little series here, but I decided to give Mythical Creatures their own quick discussion.

Dragons are probably the best known mythical creatures used in Fantasy. They’re iconic. But there are many other types of mythical creatures that can be used to tie your Gunpowder Fantasy to mainstream Fantasy.

Going through the Pantheon.org Beastiary is a great way to find mythical creatures that could fit into your world.

You can use these mythical creatures as they were originally believed to be or you can turn the stereotypes on their heads and use your mythical creatures in a completely different way. I would suggest keeping the more popular mythical creatures at least vaguely similar to their more popular myths, but it’s your world.

Several of the blog tour stops that I’ve been hosted at recently have asked “What is Gunpowder Fantasy?” It’s not an established sub-genre, so this question is definitely understandable. My short answer sums it up very well: Elements of epic fantasy (magic, mythical creatures, elves and vast scale) combined with rifles and railroads. But that only begins to scratch the surface of what Gunpowder Fantasy is, and what it’s capable of.

Setting

One of the things about Gunpowder Fantasy that can connect it to traditional Epic Fantasy is the setting that you build for your story. Traditional Epic Fantasy usually takes place in a medieval setting, with castles and kings and knights. In the Griffins and Gunpowder universe, the nation of Ansgar has been stagnated by a millenium of peace and prosperity. Castles dot the landscape, home to lesser lords and nobles. The King holds court over their people and pass decrees without consulting their advisors.

Other nations in my world have more 19th century cultures: open towns, railroads and industry. But the main part of the story remains true to settings typical of Epic Fantasy.

Setting will likely be one of the first things that you establish when you bring new readers into your world. I try to pepper aspects of Epic Fantasy with some of the more unique elements that Gunpowder Fantasy introduces to them.

You want to make sure that your setting will support the storyline that you’ve developed. For me, this meant changing the size of the world when I decided to go ahead and use steampower as a method of transportation. My original nation of Ansgar was barely a thousand miles long; with the addition of railroads to facilitate travel, my storyline would have been severely compressed. So, I stretched the nation out.

Scale

Another aspect of Epic Fantasy that you can carry over into Gunpowder Fantasy is scale. Epic Fantasy is known for telling stories of massive events that bring nations to their knees, of world-changing events that sweep up everything in their path. You can use the economy of scale in your favor, to give the readers something that they can equate to Epic Fantasies they may have read.

Scale can also help you set up a world that plays host to many different stories. If you design a world that is rich in history and populated by many nations, there’s no end to the number of series and stories that you can build on your world.

The world of Zaria is huge. Dozens of nations, both large and small, struggle against the elements, against each other and even against themselves across the face of the planet. The Ansgari Rebellion series will only touch on one part of this massive world; other series and stories will tell the tale of different nations, different characters.

Stay tuned for the next post on “What Is Gunpowder Fantasy?” in which I’ll discuss the use (or not) of Magic in Gunpowder Fantasy and  introduce some of the concepts that become available when you write Gunpowder Fantasy…